Firefox for iOS finally shows up

Hey, Firefox fans with iDevices -- it's finally here. Firefox for iOS has at last landed for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users.

Now, while it's true that you may be perfectly happy with the current crop of available iOS browsers -- Safari, Chrome, Dolphin, and Opera Mini among them -- some of you may be keen to try out this new offering, particularly desktop users of Firefox who'll now be able to sync their history, bookmarks, and passwords from their PCs, allowing for a more seamless browsing experience across all devices.

Features include an intelligent search function that suggests results which you can then follow up via a variety of search engines in just a single tap.

If you're a mobile browser that likes to work with multiple tabs, Firefox's visual tabs offer an intuitive view of all your open tabs, making it easier to jump between them and get things done.

Mozilla's new offering also incorporates private browsing ensuring the software doesn't remember any of your browsing history or cookies.

Mozilla for a long time rejected the idea an iOS version of its Firefox browser primarily because Apple, as far as Mozilla was concerned, put unacceptable restrictions on the way it wanted to build it.

However, the group couldn't ignore the platform forever, and when the arrival of iOS 8 last year brought with it new possibilities, Mozilla finally relented and started work on creating a browser for Apple's mobile devices.

For the last couple of months it's been testing the app with iOS users in New Zealand, making tweaks to the software up until its global release on Thursday. And it has some serious work to do if it wants to replicate the performance of Firefox for Android, which earlier this year hit 100 million downloads after four years on the platform.